I... I don't even know where to begin. I guess I can start by saying that every complaint about how bullshit or obtuse the puzzles are is a MAJOR self-report that you got held back in elementary school. If puzzle games just aren't your thing that's fine, but God forbid a game actually makes you figure stuff out for once. If you think these puzzles are obtuse YOU AINT SEEN OBTUSE PUZZLES. Your average old school point and click is significantly more obtuse than this. Yes, Scorn doesn't give you notifications, jingles, or XP increases to signify when you're doing the right thing, but that would be fucking stupid if it did. To me, being thrown into the deep end with no form of guidance is a major factor in what makes the game so enjoyable. This is a truly rotten, desolate, hostile, hellscape of a world, and having to experience it from the POV of a nameless lost soul fits perfectly. Neither you nor the protagonist truly knows what you're doing or why you're doing it; you just know that you need to keep going. This is where the gameplay and world design are at their most harmonious. The atmosphere is almost suffocatingly bleak, and it feels like every function of the world is just a cycle of cruelty, death, and rebirth. It's a fairly gruesome game, and the H.R. Giger inspired world design is both hauntingly beautiful and utterly repulsive in all the best ways. It makes for a truly unique experience that was engaging from start to finish. I'm still unsure how I feel about the ending, but the journey was certainly a memorable one nonetheless. For those aspects alone, the game is probably worth checking out for many people.

Unfortunately Scorn isn't always smooth sailing, and as many others have pointed out, this game has some less than stellar combat. Now truthfully I don't despise the combat (and I actually think it works well in some aspects) but its not great. It is a survival horror game, so going guns blazing is definitely not the right way to approach this and the game actually presents a few clever ways to skirt around some of the combat encounters. But you can't avoid everything so at one point or the other you'll be forced to fight head on and it's... jank. It's definitely not the worst survival horror combat I've seen (looking at you Sinking City) but it ain't Resident Evil either. For the most part, I think the game gets around combat fairly well, with the more exploration heavy sections usually having ways to avoid it. The scenarios that are built around unavoidable direct combat however, just end up feeling rough and occasionally frustrating, as one late game encounter in particular drags on forever. Though I will admit, part of me thinks that maybe that's the point. Maybe it's fitting that a world so oppressive would have combat that really puts you at a disadvantage and makes it a struggle. However I do think there is a distinct difference between making combat you dread because its challenging/has consequences and making combat you dread because its just simply annoying and not very fun, and unfortunately I think Scorn may tip the scale in the latter direction.

The game also has its fair share of general roughness with a few bugs that pop up here and there. It's mainly just small glitches in the audio and visual departments but I did have one bug where an interaction stopped working and I had to reload the game. No progress was ever lost though, so everything was pretty minor.

I have many other conflicting thoughts about this game that I'm having trouble putting into words, so I walk away a bit unsure of how to rate the game. Regardless of that, Im still very happy this finally got released and that I was able to experience it. If you have gamepass, I think it's 100% worth giving this a shot. Even if it doesn't end up being your thing, there's enough cool shit in here that warrants at least giving it a look.